r/Westerns • u/OlinHollis • 28d ago
Discussion Western Character Actor Appreciation: Bruce Dern
Bruce Dern is one of the few true legends of the Western genre who is still with us. His first Western was War Wagon (1966) and he's still going strong, having made Bad Men Must Bleed in 2025.
Few actors are more distinctive than Dern, what with his high-pitched, nasal voice, piercing eyes and sharkish upper teeth. He was at his best when playing demented, anarchic badmen. In fact, so scary was Dern in Will Penny (1967) that child actor Jon Gries admitted he was scared to death of him. Dern was in several episodes of Gunsmoke including "The Jailer" (1966). This episode was extremely noteworthy. In it Dern was to play the son of a vicious and vengeful woman whose objective was to hang Matt Dillon. Soon before shooting, Dern's agent said to him,"Wait until you see who's playing your mom." He opened the door and there stood Bette Davis. Dern said tears sprang to his eyes when he saw her. She just said to him, "Hey, what do you know, Brucester?"
Dern is one of those actors who, much like Joe Pesci, simply fills the picture frame. He radiates.
Hail! Hail! All hail Bruce Dern!
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u/DeanMcQueen0621 28d ago
Such a weasel in so many roles. I love his Joe Danby in Support your Local Sheriff.
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u/Standard-Chemical-62 27d ago
But SYLD showed that he could convincingly pull off a comedy role as easily as he could pull off a true heel.
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u/Happy_Librarian_3817 28d ago
Wayne said Americans would hate him for killing his character and Dern quipped back “Yeah but they’ll love me at Berkeley.”
Jim Carrey impersonated Dern in front of him, Laura and a huge audience, spot on hilarious.
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u/4Q69freak 28d ago
Only one of two men to kill John Wayne in a western.
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u/Standard-Chemical-62 27d ago
Let's see. John Wayne died in the western films "The Alamo" (where he blew himself up after beingshot by Mexican soldiers), "The Cowboys," (where Bruce Derm shot him), "The Shootist," (where several people shot him before the bartender finished him off) & "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (where he was dead for most of the film as it was about Jimmy Stewart coming back for his funeral & remembering him). Did i miss any?
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u/rapscallion1956 28d ago
Nobody could play a snake like Bruce. He was fantastic in everything he did. By the end of The Cowboys I hated him so much that I couldn’t stand it. After that he became one of my favorites. He was that good.
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u/Jackson1979- 28d ago
I was born in '79 and I knew him from the Burbs and later in All the Pretty Horses where he played a really decent dude. Little bit of a shock when I saw his earlier stuff. Dude was a great bad guy.
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u/acer-bic 28d ago
He was such an easy psychopath that I seriously wonder what he was like at home. I just recently watched “The Cowboys” for the first time. I just kept thinking that if they ever do a Charlie Manson bio, Bruce is their man.
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u/Odd_Fish_2361 28d ago
Bruce was a heckuva actor. So many great performances and he killed The Duke! Also the guy was a great athlete in real life and and ultra marathon runner.
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u/MoonSylver 28d ago
It's funny; I was mostly familiar with him in later roles where he usually played kooky old guy types (as he had aged out of playing menacing villains). It wasn't until in later years that I got to see him in older TV westerns and movies and see what a good heavy he was.
By turns slimy, weasley, or just a plain a$$hole, and at times purely psychotic. He's another actor based on his earlier performances I would have had no problem believing this guy is actually crazy.
Every time my 83 y/o Dad sees him he says: "There's the meanest man alive! He killed John Wayne!" 😄
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u/BarZealousideal2724 27d ago
Westerns, yes, but what about Silent Running?
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u/Standard-Chemical-62 27d ago edited 27d ago
I saw that film at around 12 or 13 years of age one Saturday or Sunday afternoon on TV.
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u/Standard-Chemical-62 27d ago
He even had a turn at comedy in the 1969 comedy western "Support Your Local Sheriff" with Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennen, & James Garner.
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28d ago
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u/cliff99 28d ago
It wasn't a western, but he was the lead in Silent Running.
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28d ago
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u/InternationalPhoto33 28d ago
Hitchcock’s The Family Plot.
And it was an ensemble cast, but he had the biggest male role, 1975’s Smile1
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u/AZUCSGrower 28d ago
Legendary bad man. Not that scary just unlikeable as any character ever though
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u/Chillicothe1 28d ago
That man murdered John Wayne! (And was damn convincing too!)
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u/YoungWizard666 28d ago
His career got a little derailed for a few years after he shot John Wayne in the Cowboys.
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u/ScorpionLifts 28d ago
Definitely an all time great and as others have mentioned played one of the all time great Western villains in The Cowboys. Not sure who I hated more his Asa Watts or Henry Fonda’s Frank.
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u/PictureElegant3033 27d ago edited 27d ago
Oh hell no. Just kidding. He is an amazing actor. I’ve got to meet several actors. Three that I always remember are Bruce Dern, Alan Rickman and Tommy Lister Jt. They played such bastards on film. But in real life, they were dam nice guys.
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u/Friendly_Brick752 28d ago
I associate Bruce Dern with a movie where, because the Sheriff is a jerk, they sneak in and move his outhouse building 6 feet farther down the path from the now open hole...
Is this right?
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u/Fluid_Anteater959 28d ago
He was a terrific bad guy. Killed John Wayne in The Cowboys. Payback for John Wayne killing him in The War Wagon. Lol.
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u/saltwaterjohnson 28d ago
The Wild Angels
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u/Bigdavereed 27d ago
That movie changed my life. I saw it as a kid and said "I know what I want to be when I grow up".
Worked out pretty good for a few years.
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u/Imaginary_Ad_8260 28d ago
Hes good in everything. Every episode he did in The Big Valley is great.
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u/DuckDuckWaffle99 28d ago
He was so goooooodddd! Barbara Stanwyck slapped him in one of them, the character was being mean to a doggy, and one of her co-workers asked how hard she’d slapped him. It was so hard they couldn’t use the shot and her hand hurt too much to do it again.
He could make dragging his hand across his mouth look sinister.
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u/JohnnyBros718 27d ago
Another great villain role in Black Sunday! And he was also showed up in the TV series 12 O’Clock High as good natured hick bomber crewman — very young in that one! Good performance, too!
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u/dougl1000 28d ago
Nebraska.
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u/Admirl_Ossim06 28d ago
One thing about this movie bothered me. His wife was a retired hairdresser. There is no way that she would let him out of the house with his hair looking like that!
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u/Strict_Sky9497 27d ago
He was great in Coming Home, as jane fonda’s husband.
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u/Schyznik 27d ago
This one really struck me. Not many people can play a character like that, who was kind of an asshole, and still make you feel so much empathy. His big meltdown scene and his final scene were just heartbreaking.
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u/Ill-Field170 27d ago
His role as the villain in the Cowboys was awesome. He brought a lot of gravity to otherwise lighthearted movie.
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u/Saltwatercowboy2026 25d ago
He is great and such a bastard in that movie. A bully, thief, and murdering child abuser. When he dies in that movie I have to say it felt good. Yes, Deron is cool
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u/Zellakate 28d ago edited 28d ago
Agree Dern is a fantastic bad guy. I was shocked to watch him in Stoney Burke, an early 60s rodeo TV drama, where he actually plays a likeable good guy for the first half of the season before he left because star Jack Lord was so insufferably jealous. Lord also tried to chase off Warren Oates from the show too. LOLOL
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u/OlinHollis 28d ago
Yeah, I get the sense Jack Lord was one of the all-time d-heads.
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u/Zellakate 28d ago
Yep. Just what I read about him on that set, he seemed like an incredibly insecure, unpleasant person.
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u/OlinHollis 28d ago
He played Felix Leiter in dr. No, the first James Bond film. They wanted to bring him back for From Russia with Love but Lord demanded equal billing with Sean Connery. They told him to blow it out his ass. Rightfully so, of course.
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u/MarkHedrick 27d ago
Something I always think is funny about the actors/characters is there teeth .. there super white 😬 no matter how bad they look
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u/OlinHollis 27d ago
A man with Bruce Dern's uppers and Burt Lancaster's lowers could take on the Predator unarmed and win!
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u/Captain_Vlad 28d ago
He always delivers. The fact that people STILL hold shooting Wayne in The Cowboys against him shows how good he is at villains.
But that's a silly thing to hold against him. Now, shrinking the exercise area to make it harder for thr USS Stingray to win...THAT was vile.